December 1, 2007
IDEOLOGY WON'T FEED YOUR PEOPLE:
Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts (CELIA W. DUGGER, 12/01/07, NY Times)
Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid.But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the United Nation’s World Food Program than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.
In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children’s Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. “We will not be able to use it!” Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef’s deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly.
Farmers explain Malawi’s extraordinary turnaround — one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa — with one word: fertilizer.
Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.
Yeah, but we subsidize wealthy white people, not poor blacks....
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 1, 2007 3:49 PM
This is quite possibly accurate, but I wouldn't take anything the Times says at face value. Note that the part about a debate over the cause of this situation -- Good rains or subsidization? -- is buried on page two.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at December 1, 2007 5:49 PMThe US doesn't subsidize its farmers. Proof: the farmers keep folding, their farms sold.
The US earmarks its largesses to a few well placed folks, such as ADM, and Ted Turner, who are rich enough to pay back politicians in campaign contributions. Small farmers be damned. In Africa aid, a lot of donations and contributions are ciphoned off by NGOs and politicians, in the US, a lot of subsidies are ciphoned off by politicians and cronies of politicians. African farmers don't get aid, American farmers don't get subsidies.
Posted by: ic at December 1, 2007 9:14 PM